Has the time for consumer grade social robots finally come?
Adam the barista social robot
The Blueskeye AI team attended CES 2024 this year and I had some time to see other people’s stands. As some of you know, I’ve always been fascinated by social robots and virtual humans. Perhaps it’s due to my childhood sci-fi influences (Alien, Terminator, Battlestar Galactica) or maybe it connects to my past research in EU projects (SEMAINE and ARIA-VALUSPA). At any rate, there's something inherently cool about them for me, and every year at CES I go looking for them, hoping that they are about to become a real success.
My company, Blueskeye AI, even made an SDK called B-Social, specifically to endow social robots with the ability to sense social signals. It never took off. The reason for this is that nobody seemed to have cracked the real use case for such robots.
In 2022 and 2023, there were some social robots on display, but they were all touted as platforms for other businesses to purchase and turn into consumer products. As a result, none of these robots were sold in large volumes and platform after platform got into financial trouble. For social robots to be sold at scale, I think they must be designed for their true, specific purpose, not as a platform technology.
This year though, I think we may be seeing the early signs of a shift. Whilst doing a quick whistle-stop tour through the startup zone at CES, I saw at least 7 social robots and virtual assistants that had a clear use-case, for example, the French Mirokai robot for social interactions and deliveries created by Enchanted Tools, or Buddy the social robot created to help children with their education. Moxie, created by Embodied Inc, even won a CES Innovation award in the AI category. It is created to help students with learning difficulties and is prominently displayed in the Amazon Services hall in the Venetian. Personally the social robot that I liked most, and which has the clearest opportunity to scale up is a robot straight from a sci-fi animated film itself: Adam the barista, made by Richtech Robotics.
Still, I think we're some way off from a commercial success breakthrough. Most of the social robots I saw were at the startup zone, and were still quite rough around the edges in terms of their capabilities, looks, and commercial model - product market fit is not quite there yet. Service robots like Adam perhaps have the clearest purpose and with that, opportunity to scale. So my prediction is that we'll still need a bit more time for social robots to mature, find product market fit, reach an acceptable price point and with that become true consumer products sold in reasonably high volumes. My prediction is that some companies will find reasonable product market fit in 2025, with the first 'hit' consumer robot coming out in 2026 or 2027.
Adam is not yet able to read your facial expressions - so maybe we should dust off B-Social and give it another chance! Give us a call Richtech!
Written by BlueSkeye Founding CEO, Prof Michel Valstar